Supersensible Influences in the History of Mankind

Schmidt Number: S-5013

On-line since: 17th July, 2004

Two

I SPOKE
YESTERDAY of certain happenings in history which lead over our
study of the life and being of man to the spiritual worlds and I
referred to two early epochs of history (the Egypto-Chaldean and the
Greek) in this connection. I told you how the ancient Initiates sought
to give guidance to men not only in matters of religion but in other
domains too, including that of social life, by calling to their aid
Spiritual Beings who are connected with the inbreathing. And we heard
that these Beings in turn are connected in the cosmos with what is
manifest, externally, in the Moon and its light. Certain Moon-Beings,
in times when such intervention had become necessary, namely in the
Egyptian epoch, were used by the Initiates in order to give direction
to the religious and the social life in ancient Egypt and to other
spheres too, of ancient historical development. We also heard of the
importance assumed in Greek culture by Luciferic Beings, elementary
Beings who were used by the Greek Initiates, for example by the
Initiates of the Orphic Mysteries, as their helpers in the inauguration
of Greek art.

I indicated that even
today, to those whose perceptive faculty is deeper and more inward than
is normally the case, the traditional heads of Homer in sculpture give
the impression of a kind of listening, of hearing that is also
touching, of touching that is also hearing. Homer listens to those
Spiritual Beings of the air who use the state of equilibrium between
the inbreathing and the out-breathing of man to create a rhythm between
the breathing and the circulating blood. The Greek hexameter is based
upon the wonderful ratio of number existing between the rhythm of the
breathing and the pulse in the human being, as indeed are all the
measures of Greek verse which, for this reason, as well as being
creations of man have also been created by the mysterious rhythm which
surges and shimmers through the cosmos. I said that when the Greeks
speak of the lyre of Apollo, we can picture its strings being according
to the impressions which came to men from this composite rhythm.

Since those days
humanity has entered upon a quite different phase of evolution, the
characteristics of which I have described from many points of view.
Since the fifteenth century, mankind has been laid hold of by the
intellectualism which now has sovereign sway in all human culture and
civilisation, and arose because an older form of speech — the
Latin language in its original form, which was still connected with
that hearing of rhythm in the Graeco-Roman epoch of which I have spoken
— continued far on into the Middle Ages and became entirely
intellectual. In many respects the Latin language was responsible for
educating man to modern intellectualism. This modern intellectualism,
based as it is upon thoughts that are dependent entirely upon the
development of the physical body, exposes the whole of mankind to the
danger of falling away from the spiritual world. And it can be said
with truth that as earlier creeds speak of a Fall into Sin, meaning a
Fall more in the moral sense, so, now, we must speak of the danger to
which modern humanity is exposed, the danger of a Fall into
Intellectualism.

The kind of thoughts
that are universal today, the so-called astute thoughts of modern
science to which such great authority is attached — these
thoughts are altogether intellectualistic, having their foundation in
the human physical body. When the modern man is thinking, he has only
the physical body to help him. In earlier periods of earth-existence,
thoughts were entirely different in character for they were accompanied
by spiritual visions. Spiritual visions were either revealed by the
cosmos to man or they welled up from within him. On the waves of these
spiritual visions, thoughts were imparted to men from out of the
spiritual world. The thoughts revealed themselves to men and such
“revealed” thoughts are not accessible to intellectualism.
A man who builds up his own thoughts merely according to the logic for
which modern humanity strives — such a man's consciousness is
bound to the physical body. Not that the thoughts themselves arise out
of is the physical body — that, of course, is not the case. But
modern man is not conscious of the forces that are working in these
thoughts. He does not know what these thoughts are, in their real
nature; he is entirely ignorant of the real substance of the thoughts
that are instilled into him, even in his school days, by popularised
forms of science and literature. He knows them only in the form of
mirrored pictures. The physical body acts as the mirror and the human
being does not know what is really living in his thoughts; he only
knows what the physical body mirrors back to him of these thoughts. If
he were really to live within these thoughts, he would be able to
perceive pre-earthly existence, and this he cannot do. He is unable to
perceive pre-earthly existence because he lives only in mirrored images
of thoughts, not in their real substance. The thoughts of modern man
are not realities.

The element of danger
for modern evolution lies in the fact that whereas, in truth, the
spiritual, the pre-earthly life, is contained in the substance of the
thoughts, the human being knows nothing of this; he knows the mirrored
pictures. And, as a result, something that is really attuned to the
spiritual world falls away. These thoughts are attuned to and have
their roots in the spiritual world and are mirrored by the physical
body; what they mirror is merely the external world of the senses. In
respect of the modern age, therefore, we may speak of a Fall into sin
in the realm of intellectualism. The great task of our age is to bring
spirituality, the reality of the Spirit, once again into the world of
thought and to make man conscious of this. If he wants to live fully in
the modern world, a man cannot altogether rid himself of
intellectualism, but he must spiritualise his thinking, he must bring
spiritual substance into his thoughts.

Because this is our
task, our position is the reverse of that of the Initiates of ancient
Egypt. The Initiates over in Asia, before the Egyptian epoch, were
able, because men were endowed with the old clairvoyance, to utilise
the intermediate state of consciousness between sleeping and waking to
have as their helpers the Moon-Spirits who lived in the inbreathing.
But during the Egyptian period men gradually lost this old clairvoyance
and the Initiates were forced to provide for their helpers dwelling
places on the earth, because these Moon-Spirits had, as I said
yesterday, become homeless. I told you that the dwelling places
provided by the Egyptian Initiates for these Moon-Spirits were the
mummified bodies of men, the mummies. The mummies played a part of the
greatest imaginable importance during the Third Post-Atlantean period
of evolution, for in the mummies there dwelt those elementary Spirits
without whose help the Initiates on earth could do very little to
influence the social life of men. In more ancient times still, it had
been possible to enlist the help of the Moon-Spirits living in the
inbreathing of men for the spiritual guidance of earth-evolution; and
when this was no longer possible a substitute was created in ancient
Egypt by making use of the Spirits who had a dwelling-place in the
mummies.

Today we are in the
opposite position. The Initiates of Egypt looked back to what had been
possible in a past age and were obliged to create a substitute. We, in
our day, have to look towards the future, to that future when once
again there will be men who live in communion with the spiritual world,
who will bear the impulses of their morality in their own
individuality, who live in the external world as I have described in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity by saying that
moral impulses must be born in the individual and from the individual
work out into the world. This is possible only when the out-breathing
of men is such that the air exhaled by an individual who has within him
quickened moral impulses, impresses the images of this morality into
the external life of the cosmos. Just as with the inbreathing, as I
described yesterday, the cosmic ether-forms enter into man and work for
the preservation of his organs, so what develops within the individual
himself must enter as an impulse into the out-breathing and pass,
together with the out-breathed air, into the external cosmos. And when
in a distant future, the physical substance of the earth disperses into
cosmic space — as it will do — there must exist a life that
has taken shape in the cosmic ether out of these images of moral
Intuitions that have passed into the ether with the out-breathed air.
As I have described in Occult Science, when the physical substance of the
earth is dispersed in the universe, a new earth, a
“Jupiter” planet will arise from the densified forms
out-breathed by individuals in times to come. Thus we must look towards
a future when the out-breathing will play a role of predominating
importance, when the human being will impart to his out-breathing those
impulses whereby he is to build a future.

New light can here be
shed upon words from the Gospel: “Heaven and earth will pass away
but My words will not pass away.” I have often indicated the
meaning of this passage, namely, that what surrounds us physically,
including the world of stars, will one day no longer exist; its place
will be taken by what flows, spiritually, out of the souls of men to
build the future embodiment of the earth, the Jupiter embodiment. The
words: “Heaven and earth will pass away but My words will not
pass away”, may be supplemented by saying: Men must be so
permeated with Christ that they are able to impart to the out-breathed
air the moral impulses quickened within the soul by Christ's words
— impulses which will build the new world out of the forms
proceeding from the human being himself.

Since about the fourth
and fifth centuries of our era, elementary Spiritual Beings from other
worlds have entered into the sphere of the earth — Beings who
were not previously there. We may call them Earth-Spirits, in contrast
to the Moon-Beings who in the epochs of ancient India and ancient
Persia fulfilled an important function and who then, having become
homeless on the earth, took up their abode in the mummies; in contrast
also to the daemons of the air who played an important role in ancient
Greece and to whom Homer “listened”. We can speak of
elementary Earth-Spirits in contrast both to the Moon-Beings who lived
in the inbreathed air and to the Air-Beings who moved, in their cosmic
dance, in the state of balance between inbreathing and out-breathing,
and were mirrored in Greek art. These Earth-Spirits will one day be the
greatest helpers of the individual human being with his own moral
impulses — they will help him to build a new earth planet out of
his moral impulses. We can call these helpers
“Earth-Spirits”, elementary Earth-Spirits, for they are
intimately connected with earthly life. They expect to receive from
earthly life a stimulus that will enable them to undo their activity in
the future incarnation of the earth. As already said, these Beings have
come into the sphere of earth-evolution since the fourth and fifth
centuries of our era. In public lectures, as well as elsewhere, I have
emphasised that remnants of the old clairvoyance persisted for some
time after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place. In those days there
were still external institutions, ceremonial cults and the like, by
means of which these Beings who had come into the sphere of
earth-evolution maintained their footing — if I may use a trivial
expression. The particular tendency of these Beings is to help man to
become very individual, so to shape the whole organism of a man who has
within him some strong moral idea that this moral idea can become part
of his very temperament, character and blood, that the moral ideas and
individual moral quality can be derived from the blood itself. These
elementary Earth-Beings can render significant help to men who are
acquiring individual freedom in ever-greater measure. But a great and
powerful obstacle confronts these Beings.

If, instead of speaking
from theories — theories are never to be taken quite seriously
— we speak about the spiritual world from actual experience, we
can hardly refer to these Spiritual Beings in any other way than that
in which we refer to men, for they are present on the earth just as men
are present there. Thus we can say: These Beings feel especially
deflected from their aim by the factor of human heredity. When
the superstition of heredity is very potent, this runs counter to all
the inner inclinations and propensities of these elementary Beings who
are by nature turbulent and passionate. When Ibsen brought out a work
like his Ghosts, which helped to make heredity a fixed
superstition, these Beings were roused to fury. (As I said, you must
get accustomed to hearing them spoken of as if they were men). Let me
express it pictorially. Ibsen's disheveled head, his tangled beard, the
strangely wild look in his eyes, his distorted mouth — all this
comes from the havoc wrought by these Beings because they could not
endure Ibsen, because in this respect he was one of those typical
moderns who persist in upholding the superstition of heredity. Those
who fall victim to this “ghost” believe that a man inherits
from his parents, grandparents and so on, propensities in his blood of
which he cannot get rid, that his particular constitution is due
entirely to inherited qualities. And what in Ibsen came to the fore
only in a grotesque, poetic form and also with a certain grandeur
— this tendency pervades the whole of modern science. Modern
science does indeed suffer from the superstition of heredity. But the
aim that ought really to be pursued by modern man is to free himself
from inherited qualities and abandon the superstition that everything
comes from the blood flowing down from his ancestors. Modern man must
learn to function as an individual in the true sense, so that his moral
impulses are bound up with his individuality in this earthly life, and
he can be creative through his own, individual moral impulses. The
Earth-Beings serve this aim and can become man's helpers in pursuit of
it.

But in our modern world,
circumstances for these Earth-Beings are not as they were for the
Moon-Beings who, having become homeless, were obliged to find dwelling
places in the mummies. These Earth-Beings to whom we must look as the
hope of the future, are not homeless in humanity but they wander about
like pilgrims gone astray, meeting everywhere with uncongenial
conditions. They feel constantly repelled, most of all by the brains of
academic scholars, which they try at all costs to avoid. They find
disagreeable conditions everywhere, for belief in the omnipotence of
matter is altogether abhorrent to them. Belief in the omnipotence of
matter is, of course, connected with the “Fall” into
intellectualism, with the fact that the human being holds fast to
thoughts that are, fundamentally, of no significance because they are
only mirror-images and he is quite unconscious of their real nature and
content.

Just as the Egyptian
Initiates were obliged to wrestle with the problem of how to bring down
the Moon-Beings who had become homeless, so it is our task now to help
these other Spirits to find the earth a fruitful, not an unfruitful
field. The worst possible rebuff for these Beings is constituted by all
the mechanical contrivances of modern life that form a kind of second
earth, an earth devoid of Spirit. The Spiritual indwells the minerals,
plants and animals, but in these modern mechanical contrivances there
are only mirrored thoughts. This mechanized world is a source of
perpetual pain to these Beings as they wander over the earth. Complete
chaos prevails in the out-breathing of men during the hours of sleep at
night. These Beings who should be able to find paths in the carbonised
air out-breathed by men, feel isolated, cut off by what intellectualism
creates in the world. And so, much as it goes against the grain, much
as modern man struggles against it, there is only one thing to do,
namely, to strive to spiritualise his actions in the external world.
This will be difficult and he will have to be educated up to it. Modern
man is extremely clever, but in the real sense he knows nothing, for
intellect alone does not create knowledge. The modern intellectual,
surrounded by his mechanical contrivances in which mirrored thoughts
are embodied, is well on the way to losing his real self, to knowing
nothing of what he really is. Inner reality, inner morality in his
intellectual life — that is what modern man must acquire, I will
tell you what I mean by this.

Human beings today are
exceedingly clever but there is really not much substance in their
cleverness. Every imaginable subject is talked about, and people pride
themselves on their talk. Examples lie very close at hand. A curious
one in European literature is a volume of correspondence, in Russian,
between two men — Herschenson and Ivanow. The literary setting is
that these two men live in the same room but they are both so clever
that, when they are talking, their thoughts jostle to such an extent
that neither of them listens to the other; they are both always talking
at the same time. I can think of no other reason why they should write
letters to each other, for there they are, in the same square room, one
in one corner and the other in the corner opposite. They write letters
to each other — very lengthy letters containing a vast number of
words but no real substance whatever. One of them says: We have become
much too clever. We have art, we have religion, we have science —
we have become terribly clever ... The other man, reading these
remarks, is merely astonished at the stupidity of the writer, although
he is, admittedly, clever in the modern sense. But in his own view he
has become so clever that he doesn't know where to begin with his
cleverness and he longs to return to times when men had no ideas about
religion, no science, no art, when life was entirely primitive. The
second man cannot agree, but his opinion is that as this whole medley
of culture develops it must abandon certain fundamental ideas if
anything at all is to result from it. The two men are really talking
about nothing, but they pour out floods of clever words. This is only
one example and there are many such.

Intellectualism has
reached such a pitch that this kind of discussion is possible. It is
just as if a man is proposing to sow a field with oats ... it never
occurs to people that it is up to them to sow seeds in culture and in
civilisation — they merely criticize what has been and what ought
not to have been and what, in their opinion, ought to be different ...
Very well, then, a man is proposing to sow a field with oats and he
discusses with someone else whether this would be a good thing to do.
They begin to debate: Ought one to sow oats here? Once upon a time the
field was sown with corn. Ought one to show oats in a field that was
once sown with corn, or has the field been spoilt by having had corn on
its soil? Were there not people living near the field who knew that the
field contained corn? And is not the thought that one should now sow
oats somewhat marred by the fact that certain people knew that corn had
been sown in the field? These people may have been pleasant people.
Should one not also take into account that the people who knew about
the corn in the field were quite pleasant? ... and so on, and so
on. This is more or less the kind of talk that goes on; because what
nobody realises is that his task is to sow the oats! Whatever the value
of our culture — whether one desires to return to the condition
of Adam or that the world shall come to an end — a man who has
something real to contribute to culture will not sit down and write
letters to his neighbour in the style of the correspondence of which I
have spoken. This sort of thing is one of the worst products of modern
mentality; it is symptomatic of the deplorable state of modern cultural
life.

These things must be
faced fairly and squarely. People who hold a certain position in life
are often capable of doing a great deal; but the important thing is
that they should do what is right at each given opportunity. There are
innumerable possibilities for action at this very minute — 11:45
a.m., 23rd September, 1922 — but it is up to every
individual to do what the particular situation demands of him. This
principle must also operate in the life of thought. People must learn
that certain thoughts are impermissible, and others permissible. Just
as there are things that ought to be done and things that ought to be
left undone, so people must learn to realise that by no means every
thought is permissible. Such an attitude would bring about many changes
in life. If it were universally cultivated, newspapers written in the
modern style would be practically impossible, for those who discipline
themselves at all would turn their back upon the thoughts voiced in
such newspapers. Just as there must be morality in men's actions in the
world of practical affairs, so, too, morality must pervade the life of
thought. Today we hear from everyone's lips: This is my point of
view, I think so-and-so ... Yes, but perhaps it is not at all necessary
to think it, or to hold such a point of view! In their life of thought,
however, people have not yet begun to adopt moral principles. They must
learn to do so and then we shall not be treated to floods of
pseudo-thoughts as in the correspondence I have mentioned ... All these
things are connected with the fact that intellectualism has diverted
men right away from the Spirit, from understanding of the truly
spiritual. A good example of this is ready to hand, and I will give it
to you, before speaking in the lecture tomorrow, about what must come
to pass in order that intellectualism may be prevented from ousting men
altogether from the world of realities.

A certain Benedictine
monk, by the name of Mager, has written quite a good little book about
man's behaviour in the sight of God. This little book only goes to show
that the Benedictine Order was a magnificent institution in the period
immediately after its foundation, for the influence of the rules of the
Order of St. Benedict is still strong in the writing of this modern
monk. One can really have a certain respect for this little book (it is
not expensive as prices go nowadays, for it came out in a cheap
edition) and, in comparison with much of the trash that is published
today, it can be recommended as reading matter. It really is an example
of the best writing emanating from those particular circles, although
all such literature is, of course, antiquated, quite behind the times.
And now this Benedictine monk has also felt inspired to speak about
Anthroposophy. So do all kinds of people, and from every possible
angle! They cannot be expected to abstain from this in their thoughts
because they do not realise that they have no understanding whatever of
Anthroposophy. It must be admitted, however, that what Mager writes
about Anthroposophy is by no means in the worst category, and it is
useful to consider his book because it is characteristic of the
intellectualism prevailing in our time. Mager says: The anthroposophist
tries to develop his faculties of knowledge so that he can actually
behold the spiritual. Certainly, Anthroposophy aims at this and can,
moreover, achieve it. Alois Mager admits that it would be an extremely
good thing if men could really unfold perception of the spiritual
world, but he maintains that they are incapable of this. He is even of
the opinion that it is not, in principle, impossible, but that the
general run of human beings cannot attain real vision of the spiritual
world. He proves that he is not, fundamentally, opposed to this aim,
because he says: Two men were actually able to develop their faculties
of cognition to such an extent that they could gaze into the spiritual
world: Buddha and Plotinus.

It is very remarkable
that a Catholic monk should hold the view that the only two men really
able to see into the spiritual world were Buddha and Plotinus —
Plotinus who is naturally regarded by the Catholic Church as a
visionary and a heretic, and Buddha, one of the three great figures
whom, in the Middle Ages, the faithful were made to abjure.
Nevertheless, Mager says of Buddha and Plotinus that their souls were
capable of looking into the spiritual world. He uses a strange picture
as a comparison, very reminiscent of modern trends of thought,
especially of militaristic thought. He compares the spiritual world
with a city, and those who desire to approach it he compares with
soldiers who are storming this Divine City. He says it is as if an army
had equipped itself to storm a city; but only two of the bravest
soldiers succeed in scaling the battlements, and so the attack
collapses. During the World War, how often did we not read, in the
communiqués, of attacks collapsing ... and today a Benedictine
monk speaks of knowers of the Spirit as soldiers who want to storm the
city of the spiritual life, but the attack fails, with the exception of
what the two valiant soldiers, Buddha and Plotinus, were able to
achieve. Mager, you see, is simply not able to admit that man can
approach the spiritual world; his intellectualism makes him incapable
of it. One is surprised, however, at his refusal to admit that any
Christian can draw near to God with real knowledge. Being quite sincere
in this respect he would naturally be obliged to reject a book like my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for its aim is
to show that the individual, out of himself, can give birth to moral
impulses in the truest sense. Mager's view is that this can never be,
for he maintains that when the human being is left entirely to his own
resources, nothing spiritual can come out of him. Therefore he says
that both private and public life will, as time goes on, be based
wholly on the precepts of the Gospels. He means, in other words, that
without understanding what the Gospels actually say, private and public
life will be organised according to Gospel precepts — which are
beyond the grasp of human powers of knowledge.

It is really not to be
wondered at, when, with the intellectualism of today, Mager says: It is
my innermost and well-founded conviction that Steiner's Anthroposophy
can only be described as a clever systematising of hallucinations into
a picture of the world, as a materialisation of the spiritual ... It is
grotesque that this should come from a man who, in himself, is honest
and sincere and is by no means among the most trivial thinkers of the
present day. In order to do him justice I told you that quite recently
he wrote a good little book. This critique of Anthroposophy is his
latest production. Think once again of the sentence: It is my innermost
and well-founded conviction that Steiner's Anthroposophy can only be
described as a clever systematising of hallucinations into a picture of
the world, as a materialisation of the spiritual ... My reply would be:
“Very well, let us assume that you are in earnest about your
conceptions of God and of the Spirit. You must place the spiritual
somewhere when you aspire to reach it ... but you do not admit that
man's powers of knowledge are capable of this. Why, then, are you a
priest, desiring to dedicate your whole life to the service of the
spiritual? You admit that the material proceeds from the spiritual. If,
now, someone attains to a knowledge of the Spirit, what is the nature
of such knowledge?” Those who adhere merely to knowledge of the
material, well, they have the material before them and the spiritual
amounts only to a number of thoughts. But a man who truly turns to the
spiritual experiences its reality. Within the spiritual, the things
that can be seen with physical eyes are present only as indication.
Father Mager regards this as hallucination, so he says that
Anthroposophy systematises hallucinations. His view is quite
understandable, because in speaking of the spiritual we cannot speak as
we do about a material table that the eyes can see and the hands can
touch. A material object exists in the spiritual merely as indication,
and so it seems to Mager to be hallucination.

And now let us go
further, and say to him: “You, Father, are dedicating your life
and service to the spiritual and you most certainly acknowledge that
the creator of the material is the spiritual. What, then, is the world
in your view — materialisation of the spiritual? Yes, but this is
exactly what you censure in Anthroposophy! You speak of a picture of
the world that is a materialisation of the spiritual, but you believe
for a fact that this world has been created out of the Spirit, through
materialisation. This is what Anthroposophy tries to fathom. Your
strongest censure of Anthroposophy is that Anthroposophy takes in
earnest something that you, yourself, ought to take in earnest, but are
not willing to do so. That is why you censure Anthroposophy. According
to your view, the God in whom you believe must surely once have taken a
materialisation of the spiritual in earnest! Otherwise there would have
been no Creation. Are you, therefore, taking your religion in earnest
when you censure Anthroposophy for trying to grasp how the spiritual
can gradually become the material?”

Into what an abyss we
gaze when we see how a man like this approaches Anthroposophy! This man
is really clever, moreover he is not like others who are all cleverness
and nothing else; he knows a little and has also learnt how to think.
But just realise what his judgement of Anthroposophy implies and you
will understand what kind of fruit is produced by intellectualism, even
when it is dedicated to the service of the Spirit today. You will
realise, too, that this intellectualism must be superseded by methods
differing from those adopted by the priests of Egypt to overcome the
spiritual dilemma that had arisen in their epoch. Of the Powers to
which intellectualism must turn we will speak in the lecture
tomorrow.